Casting around for an idea I noticed this on a blog called No Gods No Masters:
To celebrate Romans would untie the ropes on the statue of Saturn that usually bound him the rest of the year. The traditional greeting for the holiday was 'Io, Saturnalia!" (pronounced ee-oh), which means "Ho, Glory to Saturn!"
My butterfly mind skipped immediately to Sammy Davis singing Ee-oh Eleven in the 1960 "Rat Pack" movie Ocean's Eleven. Hmmm. It seems unlikely that Sammy D. was singing "Ho Glory to Eleven", even though certain members of the Rat Pack had Italian roots and could possibly have inherited the expression "Io"; they definitely inherited some of the debauchery of Saturnalia, carried it out, and not just in December - so rumour has it!
I searched for information on "eee-oh eleven" and found these gambling-related answers :
The eleven in craps is referred to as a 'Yo, an abreviated version of a dealer yelling out "Eeeeeeee-yo-leven", harking back to the old days in the gambling halls in the West and on Mississippi riverboats.So no connection between Io and eee-oh then. Pity!
When an eleven comes up on the dice the "stickman" says it this way so it does not confuse the players and other dealers with the similar sounding seven.
A player might call, "$1 on the yo," and throw a dollar chip to the stickman. This "yo" is the shortened version of "eee-ooo-eleven" which players often yell at the thrown dice if they have money riding on the eleven.
An eleven can only be rolled (dice) by a combination of one even and one odd (specifically, one six and one five). So, E-O Eleven, means even, odd, eleven. E-O has turned into Yo because it's quicker to say.
Er....Saturnalia....there's a nice blog post on it at the Meme Merchant "Oh and One More Thing" And another at the link already mentioned above for No Gods No Masters "Io Saturnalia".
That song I mentioned - nothing to do with the festival at all, but it's catchy:
